Why every small business should have a blog

So far this week we have been discussing search engine optimization on a foundational basis to provide small business owners a way to be educated about how search engines rank websites and what activities are critical in getting a higher rank. We won’t be able to get through every critical task this week, but at least this will give some basic concepts on what the search engines look for when they are determining rankings for websites.

So far this week we have gone over relevancy, links and the importance of social media. I closed yesterday’s post indicating that today’s post will cover the importance of blogging. Naturally, I think blogging is important because I have one, you might be thinking. But I have a blog because it is helping me to market my business online. This may not be totally apparent at first but let me explain in a little more detail why blogging is so important.

Going back to Monday’s post about relevancy, blog posts are a great way to show the search engines that your site is relevant to the search terms by adding free useful information on the topic on a regular basis. Going back to the plastic surgeon, a great blog topic might be around a new study on the long-term effects of having a face lift. That could even be two posts, one on the medical impact of the surgery and the other on the social impact of having a younger looking face. Both posts would be providing relevant information on face lifts for those that are searching for that term and they would also provide opportunities to link from the site out to authority sites like the medical organization that conducted the study and the medical journal that published the study.

Another aspect of improving your search engine optimization is adding new information relevant to the search terms on a regular basis, basically blogging. So by having a blog you are demonstrating to the search engines that you are relevant to the terms people are searching for. You are also demonstrating to those that find you by searching that you are an authority in your field. If you have an extensive blog with medical research on various aspects of plastic surgery including face lifts, then potential patients will see all the information you’ve published and will be more likely to trust you over another plastic surgeon who does not have a blog or any other publications that are easily found by searching online.

Blogging also helps by providing opportunities to increase the number of relevant on-site links, those between blog posts or pages. You might have noticed that I linked back to each of this week’s posts at the beginning of this post. I did that partly to help my readers get the most out of this post, but also to help my search engine optimization by slowing increasing the number of links on my website which the search engines like to see.

Tomorrow I will go over the most important aspect of search engine optimization-keywords. All this won’t come together until you have your keyword research completed so you know how your ideal customers, clients or patients are searching for your product or service and how much competition there is for those search terms. This really pulls everything together and allows you to truly optimize your website to improve your rankings and provide valuable information to those searching for your product or service.